Short Takes. "Beginners" and "Sleeping Beauty".

Here are two films so in love with their concepts that they manage to both completely enthrall or distance themselves from their audiences. In Sleeping Beauty, director Julia Leigh gives us a retelling of the classic story by setting it in a luxurious brothel. Emily Browning plays Lucy, a college student who deals with sex to get what she wants but fear not, this isn't one of those trashy sex movies. In fact there is almost no sex onscreen, except for the kind of erotic service she provides: every evening, Lucy is drugged by her madame (the eerie Blake) who puts her to sleep and lets men - usually older and very grotesque - do to her whatever she wants, except penetrate her. Leigh's postfeminist take on the classic children's story does make us wonder if something similar could've happened to the poor heroine in the story we all know so well. Was this sleeping chick a magnet for necrophilia-loving trolls and villains? 

What disappoints about this tale is that we only think of this, because the film is so dull, so full of itself and its pace so comatose that we wonder if we weren't drugged as well. Browning still fails to prove what's so special about her to make her the star of recent big productions and Leigh's literary knowledge fails to ignite any sort of cinematic spark. 

Mike Mills' Beginners inversely, seems to have been adapted from a Dave Eggers' novel (or any other hipster icon for that matter) and it works, despite it being an extreme case of "look at how indie I am". Ewan McGregor once again dazzles, in a totally underrated way, as Oliver, an illustrator (of course) trying to deal with his father's death.
His father is played by the astonishing Christopher Plummer who gives a performance full of such joy and wonder that one can't help but fall in love with him. He plays a man who comes out of the closet after his wife's death, his boyfriend is played by Višnjić and their scenes together might be the most memorable in the film, as they ring true in their depiction of simplicity and awe. The lush Mélanie Laurent plays Oliver's love interest and needless to say so, their story falls so deep into its own delusional drama that you only want the scenes to go back to Plummer. The film is excessively twee and might be too sweet for its own good. The problem is that it fails to acknowledge this and surprisingly this also becomes its salvation. By failing to see its flaws the movie moves and talks like the beautiful girl who smiles at everyone and hasn't realized she has a piece of lettuce stuck on her teeth.

Grades: Sleeping Beauty *           Beginners **

While Watching "Greenberg"...

...it was sad to realize how little use Hollywood makes of Ben Stiller's actual talent. As funny as he is in the Fockers' movies and such, he's much better at evoking a melancholic asshole-ness that pisses you off and makes you go "aww", like he does in this movie.
It helps that Noah Baumbach is a great writer (although some bits were too "look at how indie I am") but the show does belong to Stiller.
He's less Margot and more what Frank Berkman (from The Squid and the Whale) would've grown up to be like.

La mission *1/2

Director: Peter Bratt
Cast: Benjamin Bratt
Jeremy Ray Valdez, Max Rosenak, Erika Alexander
Jesse Borrego, Talisa Soto

It takes charisma to make a misogynist worthy of sympathy and that's just what Benjamin Bratt does in La mission. Proving that his worth as an actor goes beyond the enviable physique and a killer smile, he brings actual humanity to Che Rivera, a reformed, widower convict trying to deal with his recent discovery that his son Jesse (Valdez) is gay.
Being Mexican-American and into cars, it's "obvious" that he doesn't take it that well; we never really know what landed him in prison originally but it certainly wasn't his tolerance. Therefore we see Che trying to solve everything with punching, screaming and potential drinking (he's also a reformed alcoholic of course).
But despite the movie's constant attempts to make Che seem like a beast getting ready to learn about love, Bratt goes above the script and suggests a rich backstory he probably had to make up for his character.
His movements recall a wounded animal and his eyes, whether filled with anger or fear (as they usually are when Che romances his neighbor played by Alexander), reveal more than the whole movie could ever do.
In fact Bratt is the only thing that makes La mission watchable. This is a film so confused about the point it's trying to make that it believes the best way to handle it is mix several stories and pray that one of them will make sense.
Therefore we have Che's inner study, an examination of Latino culture in America, an essay on gang violence that makes Gran Torino look subtle, a ridiculous coming of age and coming out parable and a "throwback" to family films.
The truth is that the director can't handle a single of those subjects and proves there's not a single cliché he doesn't love.
Take the neighbor for example, not only is she referred to as a "hipster" by Che but we never have any doubt she's anything other than one. She's dressed in the latest hippie styles, glows when thinking of feng shui, is always carrying a plant or talking about organic stuff and works at a shelter. Like her, almost every other character in the film (as played by the corresponding actors) is a caricature, someone straight out of a sitcom.
Jesse's boyfriend Jordan (Rosenak) in the same way is portrayed like a character from a CW show that ended having a forbidden romance with someone outside his class (their story would've made a compelling film perhaps...).
And if his depiction isn't silly enough, there's also the whole way in which the director handles homosexuality.
In the first scenes when we know nothing about Jesse's secret, we're set up to believe he's leading a life of crime; so when he kisses another guy there will be a collective "oh, he's not a criminal, he's just gay!" sigh of relief across the audience.
Because obviously being gay and being a murderer are similar in some twisted world view. But the movie can't really be accused of homophobia because in latter scenes we're explicitly told that there are things worse than being gay, like the Iraq war and racist immigration policies.
If there's something this movie can be accused of is utter lack of tact, perhaps because it just doesn't know any better.
In its ridiculous way of playing out like a reactionary after school special made during the 1950's, it's just telling us that for its makers ignorance will always be bliss.

Goodbye Solo **

Director: Ramin Bahrani
Cast: Souleymane Sy Savane, Red West
Diana Franco Galindo, Carmen Leyva, Mamadou Lam

Ramin Bahrani's "Goodbye Solo" is a tale about the effect a simple stranger can have on the life of another person but done in a "poetic" way so we won't perceive it as the unoriginal ode to multiculturality it actually is.
Solo (Savane) is a Senegalese cab driver living in North Carolina with his Mexican wife (Leyva) and stepdaughter Alex (Galindo).
He meets William (West) a bitter septuagenarian who offers him a deal: one thousand dollars in cash for a one way trip to Blowing Rock, a place where the wind currents make things go up to the sky.
With the s word as the elephant in the room Solo decides he will try to make William see what makes life so special.
The problems with the screenplay are inherently American as few people will buy the idea that a cab driver actually cares for what's going on with the customer's private life. Inversely few customers would allow a cab driver to ask if he can crash at their place without them dialing the police department.
While that might come off as pure cynicism analyze this: why would William allow someone to mess up with his probable suicide plans if he wanted to do it?
And why does Bahrani make Solo the vessel for this joie de vivre if not to establish forced statements about unlikable connections?
The director aims for the sky-no pun intended-but his facile verses remain grounded by their very obviousness.
By making Solo an aspiring flight attendant he will have people making jokes about how both characters want to go up in the air. And if there is some nuance to be found in this fact, Bahrani loses it while he tries to introduce us to the friends from all nations that Solo has made.
Is the movie perhaps an attack towards the isolated nature and xenophobia relinquished to American foreign policy?
Mostly it looks like a movie that just got out of the director's hands.

Humpday **1/2

Director: Lynn Shelton
Cast: Mark Duplass, Joshua Leonard, Alycia Delmore

Andrew (Leonard) and Ben (Duplass) were best friends during college but drifted apart as the years went by. Andrew ended up getting married and lives with his wife Anna (Delmore) in Seattle where Ben, who's coming back from a long term stay in Chiapas-where he did art with natives- irrupts one early morning unannounced.
Suddenly Ben finds himself in a strange party with Andrew's new friends; a group of hippies, artists and swingers.
While Anna sits at home waiting with a cold dinner, Ben gets drunk, high and agrees to do an art project with Andrew.
Said project, a movie which they will submit to the local Humpfest, will feature them having sex. The following morning trying to hide behind and accuse the hangover they rekindle their talk and realize this is something they actually want to do to prove how one of them isn't as "Kerouac" as he thinks and the other isn't completely "white picket fences".
Writer/director Shelton has some interesting points of view about how heterosexual males choose to bond and the movie has some really funny moments, that don't necessarily involve sexual orientation stereotypes.
As the movie builds up to the imminent encounter, to take place at the "Bonin' Motel", it's not so much the characters who begin to falter and doubt, but the filmmaker herself.
"What exactly about two straight dudes having sex on camera is a great piece of art?" asks Ben as he sits next to his buddy half naked.
The question isn't directed to them as much as it is to Shelton, who came up with a cute idea and later had nothing to say with it (as happens a lot lately in "art").
She then has them involve in a conversation that's half profound questioning of our sexual perceptions, half silly conversation- a keg away- from a frat party.
Her postmodernist attempt to question the existence of her own movie feels more like a happy accident than an intention; and in her search for a door into the heterosexual male's mind she only came up with clichés.
Her idea of what it's like to be heterosexual can't help but be stained by very feminist ways of thinking. Even when she might swear she's trying to make the guys seem reasonable, she ends up being condescending to them and towards homosexuality.
When Andrew reminds himself that he's about to star in a movie about "two straight guys boning", Ben instantly asks "how are they going to know that we're straight?".
It's sweet of Shelton to want to explore the fears that lie behind society's take on homosexuality, but when she makes Ben reveal that he had "a moment" with a guy during his teenage years (kudos to Duplass for making this scene seem much deeper than it has any right to be) the whole thing feels reduced to a movie about the incomplete bonding of two college buddies afraid of middle age.
Shelton may not get men in the way she wants, but with Anna she saves the movie from becoming insulting.
She isn't only the most grounded character in the film (a lot is owed to Delmore's bittersweet, mature performance) but she's also the only one who seems to have a life outside the screenplay.
Her dialogues are more planned and thought out than anything the boys have to say and even when she suggest to her husband that he should get "that thing" out of his system, she seems to be talking from a place of pure empathy and even love.
She also has a confession of her own and even if it's not a mindfuck of a revelation it feels more human and real than anything else featured here.
Sadly, "Humpday", like its characters, is never as open minded as it wants to be.

Frozen River **

Director: Courtney Hunt
Cast: Melissa Leo, Misty Upham
Charlie McDermott, James Reilly, Michael O'Keefe

There is something disturbingly didactic in the way Courtney Hunt's debut feature film approaches its story and audience.
Dealing with issues deemed important by the so called independent movement, the results are nothing if selfconscious.
Melissa Leo plays Ray Eddy, a desperate woman with two children (McDermott and Reilly) desperate to make ends meet in order to pay for her new trailer and stuff the stockings for Christmas.
Her husband has disappeared, which isn't a first as we learn and has taken with him most of their savings (giving the story the first of several of its dramatic inconsistencies).
"Luckily" Ray meets Lila (Upham), a bitter Mohawk woman who smuggles illegal immigrants through the Canadian border (specifically through the title river which is an unchecked point).
Reluctantly they form a team, Ray has the car, Lila has the people to smuggle, they both have the need and from here Hunt does her best to deliver a film that touches the human spirit while making an important social denounce.
But what "Frozen River" has in its intentions it completely lacks in execution. It exploits its indie-ness and turns it into a selling point; watch how the gritty realism and rawness it aims for comes off merely looking stagey and cheap.
Hunt doesn't really fare better in her screenplay which boasts facile symbolism and works around coincidences that only help turn the wheels of her plot.
It's obvious that a writer's job is to put action into motion, but not if the viewer is fully aware of why everything is happening in such and such way.
The story's proximity to the Christmas holidays isn't accidental, it's supposed to make us feel worse about the characters, but how can we when the same screenplay is also terribly condescending to the racial minorities it thinks it's protecting.
Ray is essentially a racist who at one point believes two Arabic looking people she's smuggling are "the kind that blows things up" and there is nothing wrong with this, since it makes for a far more ambiguous dramatic arch, but Hunt throws in an unexpected element set to change Ray and make her more human.
What it does is turn her into the white savior who has a chance at redemption if she proves how much she's willing to sacrifice as a mother.
Instead of wondering what makes people like Ray commit crimes, Hunt settles for an afterschool special about illegal immigration and how to be good to them.
It's good that Leo turns in such a good performance, even if she knows she's at the service of such a lazy plot, she makes Ray's suffering become evident on a skin level.
Yes she's practically a single mother and yes she's doing her best to look after her kids, but what Leo gets away with is making us root for someone who's not only a racist, but also a criminal.
Nothing else in the film lives up to her performance.

Smart People **

Director: Noam Murro

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker, Ellen Page

Thomas Haden Church, Ashton Holmes

With a self absorbed title that immediately gives away the fim's "look at how indie I am" intentions, "Smart People" presents itself in the same hazy New England settings where we have learnt that middle class, dysfunctional families treat emotional pain by throwing witty bits of dialogue at each other.

This particular family is headed by English Professor Lawrence Whetherhold (Quaid), a depressed widower who is loathed by people in the univeristy where he teaches.

His daughter Vanessa (Page) is a young Republican who has taken on the role of Stepford wife after her mom's death.

His son James (Holmes) lives in his college dormitory (and the film really gets rid of him except when it needs to display large showcases of quirkiness).

The lives of the Whetherhold family members get shaken a bit with the appearance of Lawrence's adopted brother Chuck (Haden Church), a pot smoking, womanizing slacker who crashes with the family and tries to put some life in them and with Lawrence's unexpected romance with doctor Janet (Parker who is lovely as usual, but really underwritten as a character) a former student of his with a complicated emotional agenda of her own.

The problem with "Smart People" (note the intentional self conscious smirk of the title...) is that it never dares to push itself and its characters, merely relying on them as stereotypes (not archetypes as it thinks it does) of other indie films.

Quaid, who constantly proves he's a much better actor than people think, seems extracted from "The Squid and the Whale", complete with greasy hair, unkempt beard and a protruding belly all meant to scream "college professor with issues", but Quaid gives Lawrence a detached sincerity.

He acts like an arrogant prick, because that's what he's always been.

Page, who on the contrary constantly proves what a one note actress she is, feels like a hybrid of Juno and Jennifer Garner's character in the film; a control freak with growing up issues, who just can't help but throw a snarky remark whenever she can.

The one beautiful thing about Page is that her attempts at restraining her youthful spirit always fail and now and then she shines and only then does she feel like a real person.

Haden Church does the same thing he did in "Sideways", but he does end up stealing the film, because unintentionally his character is the only one who seems to catch on how fake everyone else is and his carelessness, which might be contempt in disguise, is a real punch in the face.

"Smart People" is enjoyable, but relies too much on things the characters it portrays never would consider. During one scene Lawrence is trying to win back the affections of Janet, he approaches her and confesses that he hasn't had any epiphanies or enlightenment and that he's till the same person he always was.

The film would love to think of itself as that, problem is we never really knew what kind it was.